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Thursday, 30 October 2014

Trip to emerg and home again.

I was all set for a relaxing day to let my stomach heal. In the afternoon, I tried to flush out my PICC line as I do every day, and it didn't flush. I tried a second time, no luck. I got Isaiah to try, nope. Nothing was getting through the line.

I called Amy in a panic who proceeded to get advice from her nursing friends who were all eager to provide examples of blood clots and all the worst case scenarios of what could go wrong. I then called the CF clinic (in retrospect, that should've been my first call) and the nurse said she couldn't bring me into clinic and they had nowhere on the floor for me to wait so I would have to go through the emergency department. Urghh.

Isaiah and I jumped in a cab for emerg. I've heard a lot of horror stories about the St. Mikes Emergency department being dirty and gross but it was actually not as bad as I had imagined. I mean the building is old and it's not laid out well. The waiting room isn't the most cheery place and it feels as though you're waiting in a hallway but the staff were all very friendly and efficient and the wait to see a nurse wasn't very long.

They took a chest xray to make sure that everything was where it is suppose to be and there was no clot at the end. Since the line goes to the heart, they like to be cautious when things go wrong. Which I appreciate. I would rather them not flush a blood clot into my heart because "it's probably fine."

The longest wait was for the IV nurse. No one else wanted to try the line and there seems to be only one IV nurse for the hospital. When she arrived, it flushed for her first try. Of course. Because that is how life works. I felt pretty silly for going but it's good it wasn't anything more serious. And it still works! I want to keep it in for as long as possible as I suspect my run of IV medication is far from being over.